igotry and was,
in the main, representative of a strong, popular sentiment of the time.
Henry voiced the national uprising against Rome, just as the second
Charles embodied popular reaction against the Puritans, and as William
of Orange was enabled to lead a successful opposition to the gloomy and
personal bigotry of the last of the Royal Stuarts.

The third period of British monarchical history in this connection was
that marked by the growth toward constitutional government under the
sway of the House of Hanover. Coupled with this was the equally
important foundation of a great Colonial empire, and the loss of a large
portion of it in the reign of George III. But the development of
constitutional rule under the Georges should not be confounded with the
growth of the popular and Imperial system which exists to-day. The
latter is simply a progressive evolution out of the aristocratic and
oligarchical government of the Hanoverian period, just as that system
had been a step from the kingly power of the Tudors and the Stuarts,
which, in turn, had arisen upon the ruins of feudalism and military
monarchical power. It is this gradual growth, this "gently broadening
down from precedent to precedent," which makes the British constitution
of to-day the more or less perfected result of centuries of experience
and struggle. But that result has only been made possible by a peculiar
series of national adjustments in which the power of the Monarchs has
been modified from time to time to suit the will of the people, while
the ability of individual Sovereigns has been at the same time given
full scope in which to exercise wise kingcraft or pronounced military
skill. It has, in fact, been a most elastic system in its application
and to that elasticity has been due its prolonged stability of form
under a succession of dynastic or personal changes.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE MONARCHY

It is a common mistake to minimize the importance and value of the
aristocratic rule by which the government of England was graded down
from the high exercise of royal power under the Tudors and Stuarts to
that beneficial exercise of royal influence which marks the opening of
the present century period. To the aristocracy of those two centuries is
mainly due the fact that the growth from paternal government and
personal rule to direct popular administration was a gradual
development, through only occasional scenes of storm and stress, instead
of involvin